So instead, once they had managed to beat past Sumavar's defenses, smashing into his house from all directions and overwhelming him through sheer ferocity and force of numbers, Rier had simply settled for breaking Sumavar's arms. Both of them, one after the other, snap snap, and he hadn't even asked a single question yet. The stunned Thallonian warrior had sunk into a corner, gasping and choking back tears and look- ing really rather unimpressive. If this was what a typical Thallonian was like when faced with pressure, thought Krul, no wonder the fools had lost their empire.
"Does that hurt?" Rier had asked.
Sumavar, his red face already turning a lighter shade of pink, nevertheless looked defiantly up at Rier and then spit at him. Rier, without hesitation, slammed down with his right foot and broke the large bone in Sumavar's left thigh. This elicited a howl of agony from Sumavar's throat, and in a fit of uniform mockery, the Dogs raised their voices in imitative baying. Sumavar would have reached over automatically to cradle his injured leg, but since his arms were not exactly functioning at that moment, naturally his abilities on that score were somewhat limited.
'Try that again," Rier said challengingly. "I dare you."
Sumavar did not take the dare.
"Very wise," said Rier. He glanced at his followers, who nodded approvingly, and
Rier loped forward and hunkered down near Sumavar. "You can guess what we want."
"I have no idea." Considering the pain he must have been under, Krul couldn't help but think that Sumavar was keeping his voice remarkably steady.
"Hmm." Rier scratched the underside of his muzzle. "We could, of course, go back and forth and we could torture you some more until you admit that you know what we're here for. But then you'd just be telling us what we already know and would likely be so close to death that you wouldn't last for the second part of the questioning. So, I think we'll just jump forward, if you don't mind. The one you call Riella. She eludes us.
You, we have reason to believe, know of her whereabouts. Tell us where she is and we will let you live." "I don't know where she is. I never heard of her."
"Don't be a fool." Rier sounded almost sympathetic to Sumavar's plight. "Bones knit. You can heal from this. You can still recover. You do not have to die. You have my word."
"The word of a Dog of War?" Sumavar laughed in pained contempt.
"Yes. The word of a Dog of War. Such pacts are immutable. Even such as we have an understanding of honor. Tell us what we wish to know, and we will leave you alive and no further harm come to you."
For a long, silent moment, Sumavar stared levelly at Rier. Then he said calmly, from a very far away place, "I don't know anyone named Riella." At which point the torture began in earnest. There was much screaming, screams that carried a great distance, and no one, but no one, came to help. Krul found it amusing.
They must have heard. They must have. There was no way they could not. But they realized that it was only one person being tortured, and thank the gods it wasn't them, so they hid in what was left of their ruined hovels and the great, blustering, supposedly barbaric race called the Barspens kept their distance while the Dogs of War molested unmolested.
Rier was very judicious in what he did, although naturally he could have killed
Sumavar any time. But there is no craft to execution. The trick was keeping him alive long enough to tell them what they needed to know. Rier had no need of any torture instruments. Between his claws and his teeth, he had more than enough to accomplish what he needed to do. The torture session went on for a good hour before Sumavar finally told them what they wanted to know, and after he did so, Rier continued torturing him to make sure that none of the answers changed. They didn't.
Finally Sumavar lay there, barely recognizable as a bloodied and pulped mess, his breath rattling in his chest. Rier shook his head sadly and simply muttered,
"What a waste. Do you have any idea how foolish this was?"
And then, to the surprise of all the Dogs, including Krul, Sumavar actually smiled. "You... are the fools."
This comment actually drew the bizarre half-smiles that were all that the Dogs of War were generally able to manage. They glanced at others as if trying to determine whether any of them knew what he was talking about. "Are we?" Rier finally asked. "And why would that be, dead man?"
"You seek... the Quiet Place."
None of them had mentioned it. The words themselves had an almost electric effect on the Dogs of War, and Rier drew closer to Sumavar. "Yes. We do."
"You will die... envying me. You will envy me... because I am already dead.
And your suffering... has yet to begin..."
And then he laughed. He laughed deep in his throat, and the noise was clearly annoying to Rier, because his head and neck lanced forward like a snake and his teeth clamped onto Sumavar's throat. With one quick pull he ended Sumavar's life. He carefully wiped away the blood on the edges of his muzzle, and then he turned to the others. "Tell the rest of the Dogs that they can have their fun for another few minutes, and then it's time to leave."
"Rier," Krul said slowly. "What he said... about the Quiet Place... do you think it was true? Do you-?"
You, we have reason to believe, know of her whereabouts. Tell us where she is and we will let you live."
"I don't know where she is. I never heard of her."
"Don't be a fool." Rier sounded almost sympathetic to Sumavar's plight. "Bones knit. You can heal from this. You can still recover. You do not have to die. You have my word."
"The word of a Dog of War?" Sumavar laughed in pained contempt.
"Yes. The word of a Dog of War. Such pacts are immutable. Even such as we have an understanding of honor. Tell us what we wish to know, and we will leave you alive and no further harm come to you."
For a long, silent moment, Sumavar stared levelly at Rier. Then he said calmly, from a very far away place, "I don't know anyone named Riella."
At which point the torture began in earnest.
There was much screaming, screams that carried a great distance, and no one, but no one, came to help. Krul found it amusing. They must have heard. They must have. There was no way they could not. But they realized that it was only one person being tortured, and thank the gods it wasn't them, so they hid in what was left of their ruined hovels and the great, blustering, supposedly barbaric race called the Barspens kept their distance while the Dogs of War molested unmolested.
Rier was very judicious in what he did, although naturally he could have killed
Sumavar any time. But there is no craft to execution. The trick was keeping him alive long enough to tell them what they needed to know. Rier had no need of any torture instruments. Between his claws and his teeth, he had more than enough to accomplish what he needed to do. The torture session went on for a good hour before Sumavar finally told them what they wanted to know, and after he did so, Rier continued torturing him to make sure that none of the answers changed. They didn't.
Finally Sumavar lay there, barely recognizable as a bloodied and pulped mess, his breath rattling in his chest Rier shook his head sadly and simply muttered,
"What a waste. Do you have any idea how foolish this was?"
And then, to the surprise of all the Dogs, including Krul, Sumavar actually smiled. "You... are the fools."
This comment actually drew the bizarre half-smiles that were all that the Dogs of War were generally able to manage. They glanced at others as if trying to determine whether any of them knew what he was talking about. "Are we?" Rier finally asked. "And why would that be, dead man?"
"You seek... the Quiet Place."
None of them had mentioned it. The words themselves had an almost electric effect on the Dogs of War, and Rier drew closer to Sumavar. "Yes. We do."
"You will die... envying me. You will envy me... because I am already dead.
And your suffering... has yet to begin..."
And then he laughed. He laughed deep in his throat, and the noise was clearly annoying
to Rier, because his head and neck lanced forward like a snake and his teeth clamped onto Sumavar's throat. With one quick pull he ended Sumavar's life. He carefully wiped away the blood on the edges of his muzzle, and then he turned to the others. "Tell the rest of the Dogs that they can have their fun for another few minutes, and then it's time to leave."
"Rier," Krul said slowly. "What he said... about the Quiet Place... do you think it was true? Do you-?"
Rier looked at Krul with open annoyance. "Of course not. What do you expect him to say, Krul? 'Hurry to the Quiet Place because riches untold and the secret of immortality await you there.' Of course he's going to try and warn us off. He doesn't want us to go there. I'm surprised you'd even have to ask."
"I'm sorry, Rier. It's just..."
Rier's paw moved so quickly that Krul didn't even have time to react. He struck
Krul on the side of the head, sending the Dog to one knee. The others who were standing around guffawed in appreciation of seeing someone other than themselves being slammed around.
"Don't waste my time again, Krul," Rier warned him.
Krul bobbed his head in acknowledgment. Deep within him, anger stirred, but he shrewdly suppressed it. The last thing he needed to do was toy with the idea, even for a moment, of going up against Rier. There was no question that he would lose. Rier was half again as tall as Krul, far faster and smarter and ferocious than Krul could ever hope to be. If Rier thought, even for a moment, that Krul was considering challenging his authority, he would break the smaller Dog in half without a second thought.
So Krul, wisely slunk away, as the rest of the Dogs spread out to do as much damage as possible before they, and their brethren, took their leave.
Krul didn't even glance behind him as he moved away from the place that had served as the home for the now-deceased Thallonian warrior. Instead his mind was in a turmoil, considering the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Sumavar had not been simply trying to scare them off. What if he knew something they didn't?
What if there was some sort of danger in the Quiet Place that had not been considered?
As he pondered these and other options, his nostrils suddenly flared. He smelled blood, and not far away. There was prey waiting for him, and if it were bleeding, it wouldn't be in much of a condition to fight him. That was the kind of prey that Krul most preferred. Truth to tell, Krul wasn't much of a warrior.
He held his own, and when prey ran screaming from him, he was able to run it down capably enough. But when he was going up against someone or something that was capable of putting up a fight, he was more than happy to leave the chore of taking it down to one of the other, more aggressive Dogs.
But a wounded victim? That was most definitely within Krul's abilities to handle.
A burned out building, a target of the initial strafing of the Dog's attack run, appeared to be the source of the scent. Moving quickly on all fours, Krul made his way through the rubble, inhaling deeply, closing his eyes and letting faculties other than his sight guide him. He licked his dark-colored lips in anticipation, and every muscle in his body was tense with eagerness. He tread carefully, though, for the rubble was sliding about beneath his paws and it made traction a bit difficult for him.
He moved over a crest of one of the piles of rubble, the smell of the blood so overwhelming that he felt as if he were going to leap right out of his pelt. The source was just beyond the rise, and he padded over to it, body tensed and ready to lunge. /
There was nothing there.
No. He was wrong. There was blood, all right. Blood on a red shirt that had been left lying flat on a small pile of rubble. Krul had been downwind of it, so the smell of the blood had wafted right to him. But there seemed to be no purpose to it. Why in the world would anyone leave a blood-stained shirt there for no purpose? Obviously, the answer had to be that there was a reason. The only reason that came to Krul's mind, though, was... a decoy.
And barely had his mind processed the information when his assailant leaped onto him from behind.
Krul cursed his own stupidity. He should have realized that if the shirt was upwind from him, then whoever might be coming around upon him would likely be downwind. Even as the thought occurred to him, he'd been flattened. Driven to the ground by an assailant of unexpected speed and strength. Nevertheless, it was going to take more than a simple sneak attack to get the best of one of the
Dogs of War. He tried to bring his jaws around to snap at whoever was on his back.
He had a brief glimpse of his attacker. He was barechested, of course, with thick hair that hung wildly around his shoulders. There was a thin ribbon of blood across his chest. It seemed eminently likely that he had gashed himself in order to bloody the shirt and draw Krul's attention, taking care to stay downwind of the Dog so that he himself wouldn't be detected. Krul's grudging admiration for the pink-skinned, humanoid creature upon him rose exponentially.
That didn't stop Krul from being utterly determined to haul the humanoid off him and tear him to pieces.
Unfortunately the humanoid wasn't giving him a chance. Krul tried to dig his teeth into his attacker, to get a limb within range, but the humanoid was too quick. Before Krul even knew it, the man had his arms down, under and through
Krul's arms, and his fingers were interlaced and clamped onto the back of Krul's neck. Try as he might, Krul couldn't dislodge him. He Hipped over onto his back, tried slamming the man into debris, but still he failed to make any headway in removing him. "Get off me!" he howled, as if that would make any difference. At the very least, he hoped that the sounds of struggle might attract other Dogs to his aid.
But the humanoid had been too careful. He had succeeded in luring Krul off on his own, and he wasn't about to give up his advantage. Krul felt his neck beginning to creak under the pressure.
The human brought his mouth close to Krul's ear, and he whispered, "I want to know what you know."
"I'll tell you nothing!" snarled Krul.
"I wouldn't bet on that," said the humanoid, and he readjusted his grip. He released Krul's left arm and his fingertips brushed against Krul's forehead. It was a sloppy maneuver on the part of Krul's attacker, and he intended to take full advantage of it. He started to yank free-and then his mind went blank.
He had no idea what was happening. All he knew was that he felt somewhat disoriented. It seemed to pass almost in no time at all, except the next thing he knew, his wrists were being tied behind his back. He looked around in total befuddlement. It was as if time had jumped. One moment he was in the midst of a battle; the next moment, it was over and he was the clear loser. "What did you do?!" he started to yowl, but his demands were quickly truncated when a strip of leather was lashed around his mouth.
"Stop it," said his attacker.
Krul tried to speak, tried to protest, but he couldn't open his jaws at all. He had been tied up too thor- oughly; he couldn't make a single move. His mind was still awhirl; bare minutes ago he had been the predator, and now he was the prey. It made no sense to him.
He was flat on his stomach. He tried to sit up, but then a boot pushed on the back of his neck, shoving him back down again. "There is a cost," his assailant said, "to killing. Every time you kill someone, a little piece of you dies along with your victim. I very much believe that. Which is not to say that I'm averse to killing, but the victim has to be worth it. You are most definitely not."
"I'll kill you!"
"Possibly. But not today," said the humanoid, with the tone of one who had said that phrase a number of times before.
"You'll learn nothing from me, if that's your plan!" "You mean I'll learn nothing about Riella? Or the fact that she's hiding out on a world called
Montos? Or that she holds the secret to the Quiet Place? Is that the nothing you're referring to?"
Krul froze. It was impossible for him to hide the terror on his face. "I... told you... nothing!..."
'True. But your leader-Rier was his name, I believe-isn't going to know that.
As a matter of fact, if you make any endeavor to follow me or hunt me down before I get off this rock, then trust me, I'll be sure to get word to Rier that you told me everything I needed to know without the slightest hesitation. I think I can readily imagine what your leader will do to you in that circumstance."
"He'll... kill me!" Krul choked, hating his own weakness, but having no choice.
"Please, don't tell-" "Then stay here like a nice Dog of War. Feign un- consciousness if you wish when they find you. Better for them to think that you were simply knocked cold. Your stock won't go up, but you won't be considered a traitor-just inept, which you are."
Star Trek - NF - 07 - The Quiet Place Page 5